People today live with mass-produced goods and depend on electronics to get through the day. However, vintage crafts have not lost their appeal. Many people collect them, while others practice them as a hobby or a livelihood. Some historians also want to preserve old skills so they won't be lost entirely.

Traditional skills arose out of necessity. In many parts of the world, stone was the most plentiful material. Everything from houses, chimneys, and boundary walls to objects of worship were made of stone. Others had wood, or clay, or even paper to work with. All of the workers achieved the function they desired, but they often beautified their creations along the way. Necessity birthed art.

Essential things were often made to include beauty as well as function. Fishermen's sweaters, for example, were made to keep men warm on the high seas in inclement weather. Women spun homegrown wool into yarn, often leaving the natural lanolin in to help the garment shed water. These housewives, mothers, and sisters were not content to fashion a merely serviceable sweater. Instead, they developed many of the intricate stitches still used by today's knitters.

People needed tables and chairs for their houses, linens for their beds, clothes and shoes to wear, and tools for both indoors and out. The only way for many to get items of this nature was to make them. However, that alone does not explain the turned legs and spindles of chairs, the pretty borders on sheets and pillowcases, the trim and flounces on the dresses, or the perfect symmetry and graceful curves of many an old farm implement.

We all know that useful things can be beautiful. Think of baskets, hunting decoys, pottery jugs and dishes, cut-glass drinking goblets, hooked rugs, woven blankets, and stained-glass windows. Soap was perfumed, flowers were dried to preserve their colors and scents, candles were tapered and curved, chair cushions and pillows were decorated with colorful tops.

It's exciting that the traditional skills have not been entirely lost. Careful owners, museums, and collectors preserve the objects themselves. Vintage clothing, old books, household implements, farming tools, and decorative objects exist that are a hundred years old or more.

Even more exciting is the fact that anyone can learn most of the old techniques. Community colleges offer classes in pottery making, quilting, knitting and crocheting, and restoration. Shops and clubs offer lessons and mentoring. Reenactors blow glass, cast silver, make candles, and bind books in places like Colonial Williamsburg.

Vintage handicrafts are part of every nation's heritage and should not be lost. Not only are the old skills valuable, but each object lovingly made long ago evokes the period from which it came, with its unique hardships and attendant joys. Whether using wood, stone, metal, clay, scraps (some early knives were made from worn-out files), animal skins, or reeds from the river bank, people learned to make things of beauty and value.